


Shadow of the Saviour

by minerva__mcgee



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Be patient, Eating Disorders, Eventual Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan, F/F, Graphic Depictions of Eating Disorders, I hate the title, It'll Probably Change, Not yet though, Please Take Triggers Seriously, Working title
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:07:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27694604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minerva__mcgee/pseuds/minerva__mcgee
Summary: Emma is struggling.Eventual SQ.Please read the tags for triggers.
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan, Prince Charming | David Nolan/Snow White | Mary Margaret Blanchard
Comments: 12
Kudos: 49





	1. Chapter 1

“Mom!” Henry shouted from the doorway, “You’re going to be late for work!”

Emma bolted upright and grabbed the alarm clock on her nightstand, blinking as she tried to process the red numbers. “Shit,” she muttered, realizing they read 8:49i AM. She slammed it back down on the table, pissed that it didn’t wake her in the first place, and swung her feet out of the bed. Black spots immediately started to fill her vision and she fell back down, putting her head in her hands.

“Emma,” her mom called up to her. “Are you alright?”

“Fine!” She shouted back, trying to become aware of her surroundings. Coming into her senses, she became incredibly aware of the hollowness in her stomach as it screamed for sustenance. She smiled to herself as she rose to her feet and changed her clothes, rushed into the bathroom to brush her teeth, and patted down her hair the best that she could.

The blonde came tumbling down the stairs and rushed through the front door, barely listening as Snow called out after her about missing breakfast.

_Got to start a morning out right,_ Emma thought to herself, _At least there’s one benefit of over-sleeping._

By the time she got to the station her stomach was loudly protesting and her muscles were screaming at her with every move she made. She plopped herself down in her chair and went to fill her water bottle at the sink. The cool water made itself known every centimeter it traveled down her esophagus and into her stomach. Emma reveled in the feeling of cold water on an empty stomach as she took out a journal buried in her messy desk drawer. It read “Property of Sheriff Swan” on the cover, a gift from her mother when she got the job in the first place.

She flipped to a page about halfway through the journal and read over her handwriting from earlier in the week.

**Monday: Apple for breakfast. Water for lunch. Salad for dinner. Ice for dessert. 310 calories.**

**Tuesday: Banana for breakfast. Salad for lunch. Seven carrots for dinner. 370 calories.**

**Wednesday: Water for all meals.**

**Thursday: More water. I’m nearly drowning over here.**

She scribbled _Friday: Water for breakfast_ under Thursday and snapped the journal shut, admiring her work. Giving a quick glance around to confirm that there was no one else in the typically empty police station, she walked over to the mirror that hung near the doorway and pulled up her shirt to look at her stomach.

Her hip bones were coming out more every day, and she could see more ribs as the hours passed. A slim finger reached up to trace the outline of her bones and she frowned. Not quite as pronounced as she’d like them to be.

Emma knew she’d have to face the scale today. Tuesday and Fridays were her weigh-in days. When she had started tracking four weeks ago, she was 134.6 pounds, and was hoping to be at 100 by now, but on Tuesday she was 109.2. Taking a deep breath, she walked over and pulled the scale out from her bottom desk drawer and took it to the bathroom.

She stripped completely naked, even taking the time to take off her necklace, and blinked back nervous tears as she took a tedious step onto the scale. Her face pointed toward the sky for a moment before she forced herself to look down at the green glowing numbers at her feet.

103.5.

Now she was really crying. She was so close to hitting 100, but still not close enough. She leaned forward and rested her head against the cold tile wall that stood across from her and let herself cry a bit, wrapping her arms around her shoulders and tracing her collarbones with her fingers. After a moment of self-pity, Emma pulled herself together and re-dressed herself, picked up the scale, and exited the bathroom.

As she turned the corner back into the main room of the station, she froze when she saw her father standing at her desk, reaching for the journal.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re using the journal, Emma. Your mom was worried you weren’t,” he went to pick it up, but Emma yelped in protest. His head shot up to her in surprise, dropping it back on the desk as though it was on fire.

“Sorry, sorry, private,” he said, approaching Emma to give her a kiss on the forehead. David finally noticed what she was holding. “Everything okay?” he asked, an eyebrow cocked in concern.

“Yes,” she said shortly, walking back to her desk. She prayed to whatever entity was up there looking down that that would be a good enough answer, and that her dad wouldn’t see the red creeping up her face. When David didn’t press the matter further, she thanked whoever was listening. She refused to look at him again, so she didn’t see the concerned glances she was receiving from him every few minutes.

They sat in tense silence until a call came in and Emma immediately took it, walking out of the door with only a “goodbye” and no look back at her dad, a pang of guilt pairing with the rumbling in her stomach.


	2. Chapter 2

As he set his things down on the counter at the end of the day, David’s mind was still repeating the interaction he had with Emma that morning. His wife had already laid dinner out on the table for him – just dinner for two tonight, as Emma said not to count on her for the meal and Henry was with Regina. They had been excited to have a meal, just the two of them, but Snow knew there was something wrong the second he walked in the door.

She decided to give him a few minutes to process before prodding him as they sat down to eat. “How was your day at work?”

He looked up at her and she recognized a sadness hidden in his eyes that she hadn’t seen in a while. She cocked her head to the side a bit and reached a hand across the table, grabbing one of his.

“How does Emma seem to you these days?”

Snow set her fork back down on her plate and swallowed the food in her mouth as she studied her husband’s face. “A bit off, now that you mention it. Why? Did something happen?”

He sighed deeply. “I saw her at the station when I went in this morning, and she was coming out of the bathroom holding a scale. She had definitely been crying. I also saw that journal that you got her on her desk, and I told her I was glad she was using it, and she got very defensive when I picked it up. Which, I know, I need to give her privacy and not look in it, but at this point I’m a bit worried about her and I’m thinking that maybe that journal has information in it. If she’s hurting, I want to help. Have you seen that she’s lost a bit of weight?”

“I have noticed that, yes,” said Snow slowly, measuring her response. Alarm bells were going off in her head, but she didn’t need to send David into more of a panic. “But, honey, Emma is an adult. If she needs help, or if she’s hurting, we need to trust that she’ll come to us.”

“When did you become the reasonable one?” David gave her a sad smile, “Usually it’s me talking you down from a frenzy.”

“Being a mother and a grandmother has put some things in perspective,” she said thoughtfully. “Maybe Regina has noticed something in Emma. Or Henry.”

“If Emma’s hurting, I hope Henry hasn’t noticed. He doesn’t need to share her pain. That’s our job.”

“Agreed,” Snow took another bite, becoming lost in thought. “What do you think is in that journal?”

David sighed. “I don’t know. But I bet it will tell us what’s going on with her.”

The gust of wind that accompanied her son as he burst through the front door nearly took Regina off of her feet. A quick “hello” and a flash of color ran up the stairs, and she was left in the open doorway facing Emma Swan, who gave her an apologetic smile. “Hello, Miss Swan.”

“Hi, Regina,” said Emma, her voice wobbling a bit. To the untrained ear, it would have been missed, but not much gets past Regina Mills. “It’s been a while.”

“That it has,” Regina replied, looking Emma up and down and taking in her rather bony figure. A look of concern flashed across her face. “Are you alright?”

“What?” Emma retorted. She put her hand on the doorframe, hoping that the move would be passed off as a casual lean rather than her trying to steady herself on her weak feet. “Of course I am.”

Regina caught her eyes. “You sure don’t look it. You’re looking very thin and pale. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, Regina, I’m fine,” Emma snapped harshly. “Just … catching a cold or something.”

It was clear that Regina didn’t believe it, but she didn’t push it. “Well … let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

They stared at each other for a moment in silence. “Thanks, Regina.”

Regina nodded and watched as Emma turned around and walked back down the sidewalk to her car. Her clothes were practically hanging off of her, and Regina noticed that her hair looked thinner. She made a mental note that she would keep an eye on her and figure out what was going on.


	3. Chapter 3

Emma flourished her pen as she wrote a big 0 next to Monday. After a weekend of eating less than 400 calories a day, she had fasted all day Monday and was prepared to do it Tuesday. She wished that a call would come into the station to give her something to focus on other than the gnawing in her stomach and the sideways glances her dad was given her from the computer across the room. Her ears tuned into the rain pattering against the window and she let her eyes close and her head lean back.

The door to the station opened and shut, and she heard David stand up and walk toward the clicking sound of approaching heels. Emma decided she’d let David handle it, until the conversation had slowed and she had the feeling she was being watched. An eye peeled open and Regina was standing across from her desk, a bag in one gloved hand and a tray with two coffees in the other.

“You know this is a police station, we have coffee here,” said Emma, closing her eye again. She was trying to sound causal, but panic was crawling up her throat.

Regina set the cup on the desk and opened the bag. “Yes, Miss Swan, and I’ve had it before. It’s awful. Take this one, and I brought some cream and sugar. I’ve also brought you a sausage, egg, and cheese croissant from Granny’s.”

Emma could feel her stomach turning at the sound of that, and the smell slapped her in the face. It smelled _amazing_.

_Stay strong. You don’t need it. It’s just fat in a different form._

She shook her head. “Thank you, Regina, but I’m okay, I already ate breakfast.”

“When?” said David, putting down his own cup of coffee, which Emma hadn’t noticed that Regina had brought him. “You were driving in front of me on the way to work. We’ve been here the whole time. I haven’t seen you eat.”

Emma reached into the wastebin and pulled out an empty wrapping for peanut butter crackers. “I had these. I keep a box of them in the car, and I ate them on the way here.”

David seemed to buy it, which made Emma flood with relief, but Regina narrowed her eyes. “Well, that’s not a very balanced breakfast. Take the sandwich anyway, and you can eat it for lunch if you’re not hungry now.” She held out the paper bag to Emma, who stared at it.

_Take it, put it in the fridge, take it out and pretend to take a call and throw it away outside._

With a plan in place to prevent herself from gorging on the 760 calories she knew were in the sandwich, she took it and smiled at Regina, and put in the fridge. Regina gave her one last look, a hint of worry in her eyes, and left the station. David seemed sated, smiling at her as she sat back down at her desk.

She couldn’t believe that planting that wrapper in the wastebin had worked.

As her shoes slammed into the ground, one after the other, Emma wiped the sweat off of her forehead and stopped for a moment, looking around the forest. She allowed herself to do an hour on the treadmill at the Storybrooke Gym, but the receptionist started giving her weird looks if she stayed on any longer, and she had only burned 275 calories, so she moved to the woods. It had gotten dark long ago and she didn’t care what time it was anymore, but her Fitbit was telling her that she had burned an additional 450 calories since the treadmill.

Emma finished the final leg of her run to her apartment door, and took a second to catch her breath before entering. Her parents were sitting at the table, and their faces snapped up to her when she walked in.

They rushed over to her, and Emma wasn’t sure why until she was suddenly on the couch. Specks of black started to fill her vision, and she realized she could hear her mother’s voice distantly, as though she was whispering from across the room. Cold hit her in the forehead, startling her. She reached a hand up and felt the wet washcloth for a moment for a strong hand gripped hers. David.

After a few moments, she could hear her mom’s voice clearly, asking if she could hear her, and soon her face came into focus, only a few inches from her own.

“I can hear you. Sorry, I think I might not have drunk enough water on my run. I got a little dehydrated. I’m feeling okay now.”

She tried to sit up, but hands on her shoulders pushed her back down on the couch. “Oh, no,” said Snow sternly, keeping her hand on Emma’s shoulder, “You’re not getting up. You’re laying here, and we’re getting you some water and something to eat.”

_Fuck._

Deep down, she knew that she needed to eat something, but the thought of doing so brought back that same panic she felt earlier in the day when Regina showed up with the sandwich. “Actually, I think I just need a nice shower and to lay down in bed, I’m going to go upstairs – “

Before she could say anything else, Snow was holding a glass of water with a straw in it and forcing it into Emma’s hand. She sipped it, feeling the cold slip into her stomach and watching David start to make her a sandwich. It was now or never to escape without eating.

She took Snow’s hand off of her shoulder and stood up, ignoring the black spots filling her vision. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Please eat something first,” her mother begged to Emma’s turned back as she began to climb the stairs. She stopped and turned to face her.

“Honestly, I’m feeling a little nauseous. The thought of eating right now doesn’t sound great. I’m going to shower and lay down for a while, and I’ll get up in a little bit and eat. Okay?”

David and Snow exchanged worried looks. Snow turned back to her and pressed her lips together. “Okay. We’re going to leave some food out for you.”

Emma smiled and nodded, turning back up the stairs and ascending them until she was alone in her room.

These were getting to be too close of calls. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep going with this, but she knew she had to. Climbing into the cold shower, knowing they burned more calories than hot ones, she sat under the freezing water, wallowing in the guilt that she felt knowing that she was worrying her parents.

And, maybe, Regina.


End file.
